A Whiter Shade of Pale
by Ackerman
Summary: Early years: Nina Sharp's lab notes during her time with Walter and William Bell. Just how well did she know Peter?
1. Pr773 Ex7

**Whiter Shade of Pale**

Project 773 – Exploration 7 -

_EverY good boY does fine. (FACE!)_

_Water, earth, air, & fire, onlY three in a funeral pYre._

Walter's reverting back to his crackpot little rhymes again, waving the neuro-stimulator around like a rag doll or perhaps a small child that no one particularly likes. But I see that he is good with the boy who seldom talks. He appears to have thoughts in his head which, if accessed, could be instrumental in our findings regarding Cortexiphan. Or so we're willing to believe until he can prove us otherwise.

The games his father constructed tell of his intellect. He is especially quick at completing the light box test but it tires him almost immediately. William is already pressing that the first batch of children be primed and ready for the administration of the drug as a simple trial and error. The children can easily be sprung if we target the money-hungry parents blinded by the pretense of assisting medical science. The second – official – batch of children probably won't be for another few years yet.

The difficulty lies in controlling our crop if the current subject continues to resist experimentation. His special gift wars with his sullen temperament. He would rather be pushing himself along on his tricycle or building a sandcastle like an average child to save him from accepting the responsibility that comes with possessing an IQ of one-ninety.

I was no less reluctant to work with him as he is us. At first, I didn't think it fair on a young boy, especially as young as he is. But I'm just the assistant to the Bell and Bishop Show, I've learned not to question them anymore. Ethics be left at the door because regardless of his age or potential medical health repercussions, he is merely the means to our end. In the future, if he co-operates, there can be many more like him.

William tries to attach the neuro-stimulator but the subject kicks and pulls. To think Walter was hesitant when I insisted he be restrained at the wrists this time.

_Hail the neurostimulator! How I love to plug and plaY her!_

_Is there nothing she can't do? From Simon SaYs to Peek-a-boo?_

_The halo made to open locks, into our brains, into our thoughts._

_A window to the conscious mind, hidden thoughts & clues to find._

Music playing softly, slowly. Walter's dancing with the equipment again, trying to calm the subject. A smile. He relaxes. Incorrigible thoughts, as if he were mentally stuttering. Ah, their family curse: thinking too hard. Sedation will lessen the higher brain function. I almost feel sorry for him (or perhaps 'It' suits him better, more appropriate) when he squeezes his eyes closed, crying and afraid, and Walter forces his hand into a fist to find the vein in his forearm.

But it's sloppy getting attached to a lab rat even if he does take form of a sweet little boy. He's simply Exploration 7.


	2. Pr269 Ex2

Project 269 – Exploration 2 -

Synaptic transfer test two.

I can't help but wonder what would happen if the person who came up with the 'Bring Your Child To Work Day' incentive stepped inside our lab here and seen what kind of work we considered kid-friendly. There has to be something decidedly immoral about watching a child's body convulse with each shock treatment and then merely up the voltage and take down notes. His electrically induced seizures are monitored and recorded however, and he is given a heavy dosage of anaesthesia ensuring that he can't even remember such therapies let alone feel them.

NB/ Subject does complain of severe muscle ache afterwards though. **

The subject has a surprisingly low electrical tolerance, rating at 40. So, adjusting the medication, William, but not without Walter's consent, continues to shock him with the car battery. The synaptic transferring of data isn't altogether working. The readings seem almost scrambled.

To alter the experiment or to alter the test subject – our child?

Walter's been complaining that the boy is getting sicker. We'll have to be careful because if a wife or even a teacher starts to recall his rapid deteriorating health and obvious memory lapses and a doctor and/or team of social workers get involved, our work here won't be recognised for what it is. To such intellectuals, it's the collecting of data. To the rest of the world, it's a new form of child abuse.

Sometimes he'll vomit and complain of fatigue, forcing us to abandon the tests and games. Even in the face of progression. His deep-seeded fear of the lab used to be immeasurable but some days when Walter manages to snatch him away from its mother, he'll be led in by the hand and he won't recognise myself or William at all.

Perhaps he's just experiencing the aftermath of too many homemade drug cocktails and his body is rejecting treatment. Or, he really is a naturally sick boy and he isn't the viable test subject that we allowed ourselves to get excited about countless times before after all.

He's supposed to be acting as a live feed so that we may be able to access the thought processes of the animal carcass to further promote our hypothesis that it is possible – if the procedure is recalculated somewhat – to communicate with a corpse if held in suspended animation for any given length of time. At estimation, five hours after death.

But again, the problem with using a test subject so young hinders any would-be progress because just about everything inside the lab itself is irrational to him. To say that he is over-thinking again is an understatement. When conscious, he's trying desperately to make sense of the situation he has yet again found himself in. His thoughts, just as they had with the neuro-stimulator, are colliding and dominating the readings, making him unwilling to listen to what our second subject, the carcass, may or may not be communicating with him.

_Pulling thoughts - substantially more difficult than pulling teeth._

Walter posited that besides his son's higher brain function playing the role of the over-active imagination, the merging of species-to-species psyches might be acting as a barrier in itself. Even if he _was_ provoking a response from the carcass he wouldn't know how to translate that information.

Peter is decidedly too human for our experiment to be carried through.


	3. Pr269 Ex3

Project 269 – Exploration 3 -

Synaptic transfer test three: inconclusive.

At precisely 15:05, it was my great displeasure to pronounce little Peter Thomas Bishop officially dead. As a boy of science, perhaps involuntarily so, he had served our work well. But it seemed a hollow victory that the world in which we opened up to him should claim him back with full force.

Walter interrupted the transferring of memories from our carcass to the child when he stopped responding to the voice that was meant to be guiding him through his dreamscape. Pulling him out of the tank and detaching the electrodes wasn't an altogether foolish thing, but the child couldn't be revived regardless.

We tried the obvious: laying him out on the now wet tiles and beating hopelessly against his chest whilst Walter could perform mouth to mouth. But I suspect that he took his last breath at least one minute before he was in his father's arms.

Drawing a syringe to calm Walter, William insisted that we push forward. The subject's passing was a minor hiccup, and I still stand by Mr Bell's decision to have us prep Walter instead for the exam.

_The puzzle is one of recursion: the linking of the brain to itself. What happens when a person goes through his own portal? Herein lies the danger of a strange loop, an endless spiral of meta-realities, each gazing into a Yet deeper self. The experience could lead to the destruction of identitY. Or perhaps its affirmation – for what is self but an endless recursion, looking at oneself in a mirror within a mirror within a mirror..._

The defibrillator managed to kick-start the subject's heart after a further three minutes of lifelessness, something that isn't entirely extraordinary even within regular hospitals today. When we were satisfied with the weak breaths he was managing, but barely, I would have preferred that we hook him up to some sort of respirator but placing the formerly dead boy back into the tank was a risk that William seemed content on taking.

He posited that whatever had caused our subject's lapse was because he had gone too far into himself and didn't know how to come back to the reality outside of his drug-induced coma. We knew that reconnecting him mentally with Walter was reversing today's precautionary measures. It was a semi-practised theory: the practise being that the corpse was the carcass itself and Peter was the test subject, the translator.

To use Walter as the reader and Peter as the temporary corpse wasn't something I was confident about. If the child were to stop breathing again inside of the tank then his memories could transfer into Walter's mindset and our subject would be psychologically free to pass from our world to the next.

Furthermore, if we _were_ to misplace his stream of consciousness again, it wouldn't just jeopardise our findings but without an immediate reader it would destroy any future explorations into communicating between the living and the dead.

* Walter successfully guided test subject through his own dreamscape. No further seizures but child was brought to hospital on the grounds of an asthma attack.


	4. Pr773 Ex8

Project 773 – Exploration 8 –

Walter refused consent to place the boy into the tank again so soon after the third exploration of Project 269 had failed. We have decided therefore to return attentions back to Project 773 for the time being.

_The magnetic neurostimulator is the first essential component. The second is the laboratorY itself, whose dimensions will encourage reception of transmissions. But despite mY joY, there is still discontent. Something here is not preciselY right. Something missing, or something extra. I cannot place it. I am crowded bY the walls._

Perhaps the failed element isn't the test subject himself. He may be perfectly able to communicate with a fresh corpse as was first theorised. Adjusting the means of communication, or, rather, 'going back on ourselves' as it were may be in order.

Such a simple tweaking of the experiment beforehand (Exploration 7) begs the question: Why did we revert to using the tank at all?

Often the easiest solution alludes two geniuses when pent up inside of our small lab because they have become too obsessed with thinking outside of the box and imagining impossibilities, too busy arguing and competing with the other that their inner voice of reason becomes... deafened. I think besides the frequent coffee and food run, I can offer them occasional clarity too.

It is clearly too early to start hooking up the test subject – a little boy – to a dead thing again and expect him to engage in conversation with it, even if the conversation isn't a typical exchange of words or thoughts. We are hoping that at the very least he will experience visual or even emotional connections to the carcass, but as Walter reminds us, so much has already happened here and so much is still about to. If experiments are rushed, we may have destroyed adequate results.

We cannot risk that. We also cannot propel the boy into scientific advanced procedures any more so than he can stall scientific development. We are just three people. Four, I suppose.

The problem with Project 269 is that we have become too excitable and were almost prepared to sacrifice the test subject for our cause. If Walter hadn't remembered that the child in which we are manipulating is, in fact, his own and, in turn, hadn't reminded us that he is just _that_, a child, then I have no doubt that we would have lost the boy to Project 269.

Returning to 773 is in the best interests of the boy...

And since the animal carcass couldn't transmit anything to Peter (because we are certain such failed attempts at picking something up didn't reflect the test subject's ability), we need a human-to-human conversation.

And since we don't have a human corpse readily available for experimentation, we will have to learn from Walter's drug-induced coma and the mistakes of our 269.3 work.

And since we couldn't push further with the test subject because his natural life was hanging in the balance and we would have a father to answer to thereafter, if we can ensure that Peter himself will not act as the incorrectly christened 'temporary corpse' then there should be no problems exacting a second device much like the neuro-stimulator and using a second human-based test subject to counteract our boy.

* And so, if we merge Project 773 with 591, re-evaluating the military strategy and its ghost network we half-successfully established, then young Peter can hopefully adjust to one of our previous test subjects and communicate with him over the secret frequency.

NB/ See Project 591 Exploration 1-21 lab notes – Roy McComb.

** McComb was injected with an organo-iridium compound that acted as a receiver (albeit an unfortunately poor receiver). Not unlike Cortexiphan, the subtle messages that McComb receives enter via his sensory cortex. There was no immediate use for McComb himself because no one actually activated the unique frequency he and just two other test subjects were exposed to.

However, if the boy continued with Walter's games and learnt to better harness how he received information himself, he could easily pull thoughts/feelings/visions from McComb through osmosis almost. The neuro-stimulator to the child is mere training wheels to a bike.

If the iridium-based compound were shifted to McComb's auditory cortex, the transmission might be easier for both test subjects to understand. But making things easier on the boy isn't our intent – this ghost network is to act as the barrier between the living and dead, merely in theory. If Peter can successfully access McComb's mental blockage, there is no reason he cannot extract information from the deadened mindset of a corpse.

*** To simplify the intent of Cortexiphan: a drug designed to heighten the minds and abilities of children, and, most certainly, mirrored on the higher brain function of our little one-ninety. If we ever reintroduced him to it, I don't know if it would overwhelm or stimulate him.


	5. Pr773 Ex8 Continued

Project 773 – Exploration 8 –

Cont.

McComb was brought into the lab a further four days after we decided to revise Project 773. The child was playing at a work station in the centre of the room, quietly lining up test tube racks and imitating what he imagined his father did day-to-day, pretending to mix chemicals even though he had access to nothing.

Although he was well-behaved and spoke up only once (wondering if Walter could take him to the bathroom), his presence seemed to alarm McComb somewhat. When we were at our separate computers, I noticed that he had tried to gain the boy's attention. But Peter knew better than to converse with the students; and Walter, despite his otherwise gentle disposition, had a history of turning on his son, perhaps taking the frustration that accompanied our work out on him.

I remember McComb from Project 591 now. Whiny but understandably so. Annoying. Always talking, talking. The original neuro-stimulator was fixed to Peter with ease – although Walter did still have to dance for him to some old record. McComb was less calm. He continued to talk (what I can only describe as 'animatedly'). It was as if he was trying to talk the child into a tantrum, wanting him to resist the tests.

The boy's eyes didn't leave mine though. I don't think he particularly appreciated the inclusion of Roy McComb's personality into the mix. It was probably hard enough already playing lab rat to his father and co. let alone having to assure someone over a decade his senior that everything would be fine. Because he was bright enough to realise that everything would never be fine. We dehumanised him much too often for things to be 'fine' with him. Even his own father was guilty of that.

McComb didn't respond well to us sedating Peter. He became positively distressed, demanding to know what kind of work we were doing here and why either of them had been drawn into such a world.

Peter was Walter's hybrid, and an exceptionally intelligent one. McComb on the other hand – he was the opposite. Too senseless to deny us whatever medical experiment we wanted so long as the thirty pieces passed his miserable ignorant little palm. He was probably correct though, the child didn't really deserve to have his childhood taken from him. But childhood memories are a small expense for pseudo-science. One day... one day I have no doubt that he'll get it. He will be more than a part of our world. Our work will have opened him up to a whole new realm of possibilities. And when he is privy to such a dangerous and imperfect and brilliant pursuit of knowledge, he'll soon detach himself from the norm anyway.

McComb, unfortunately, is very much the norm. Pitiful, witless, dormant, blinded norm.

When McComb was finally sedated, Walter attached the newly-constructed device similar to the second neuro-stimulator but decidedly more... barbaric-looking. Required rewiring.

For once, although drugged, the boy was allowed to remain conscious. He seemed frightened. His eyes were on me again and quickly filling with tears. Perhaps he felt that he could appeal more directly to me because I was the only female in the room. He certainly didn't look to Walter to find that greater sense of compassion anymore. Which is a shame because if his work wasn't consuming him, Walter was oddly natural with children.

The child openly wept the whole way through the procedure – McComb's unconscious form upon Walter's injection scared him into believing that the man was indeed dead just like the animal carcasses we had been hooking him up to only weeks beforehand. I came to stand next to him, only to dry his tears and adjust a loose electrode, and he held my hand as if I had offered. I hadn't, but still. I couldn't rightly let go. I don't have any children of my own and frankly if Walter and William resigned them to any such fate I would gladly not be a carrier. It's own mother should have done a better job shielding him from his obsessive-compulsive father.

My colleagues bickered in a distasteful back-and-forth. William had moved to strike the boy (which wasn't uncommon), demanding he cease his crying and answer McComb, help McComb. Could he see anything? Was McComb telling him things? Walter took great offence – the boy held my hand tighter – paper was forced into his lap, purple crayon in his hand, and his father, suddenly in front of him, cupping his face and promising him ice cream was pleading that he draw whatever comes to mind.

He did. He drew of a building some four stories high, flames licking around its roof.

* Synaptic test three: successful. McComb came-to and told of a recurring nightmare wherein his parents were trapped in a house fire even though they had not died. A childhood trauma that Peter had connected with and translated for us.


	6. Physical Assessment 6

Physical Assessment 6 –

NB/ Test subject not due his monthly exam until a further three weeks. However, Walter has pinpointed some irregular neurological problems in the boy. As experimental animal infections can reproduce highly pathogenic AIV infection symptoms, it may be conceivable that the test subject has contracted the pathogenic entity H5N1. Walter estimates a rare strand of bird flu, but similar to the Highly Pathogenic Influenza A (Hepia).

Test subject exhibits severe respiratory distress, high fever and acute viral pneumonia, certainly symptoms of avian influenza.

*May explain Peter's shortage of breath in the tank experiment (see 269.3) resulting in respiratory failure when his lung collapsed.

Test subject also has unexplainable bruising covering his entire body.

**William likened the bruising to one of the symptoms of Hepatitis C, a viral infection of the liver when patient bruises easily. Although this was ruled out when he and Walter took a swab from the nose and throat and took a blood specimen – used molecular test and grew the virus.

***William was able to confirm that disease was contracted through association with the animal carcasses boy was continuously exposed to. This lab.

* * *

Attached, personal lab report –

I am concerned about the professional ramifications of the H5N1 diagnosis because Walter has taken the hit personally. And, quite frankly, rightly so. There isn't an iota of doubt in my mind that had we not been experimenting and exploiting the child so continuously, so readily then he wouldn't have fallen ill.

Walter's temperament has always been close to volatile even though William is arguably more dogmatic, so his episode in the lab today should almost be expected. When William's analysis of the viral condition confirmed Walter's suspicions that the child has indeed caught bird flu in what we believed was a controlled environment, he flew off the handle. He terminated my exam of the child, quickly redressed him, struck him when he was non-responsive to being summoned and dragged him out of the laboratory entirely. Just as the scientist in him is, as a father, his greatest vice; the paternal side to him is, as a man of science, a vice just as deadly.

If I am allowed to examine the boy again (i.e. if Walter calms down and confronts this disease methodically and logically instead of trying to deny that there is anything wrong with his otherwise perfect little, brilliant little, special little hybrid), I wouldn't be surprised if there is dark bruising to his wrists and forearms after Walter caught him abruptly and demanded that they were leaving. It would support William's theory that this progressed form of influenza is exacting symptoms close to Hep C and that the bruises haven't appeared completely from nowhere.

Although there is no sign of multi-organ failure besides the breathing difficulties in the tank (suggesting lung problems), the bruising tells that the influenza has entered the stage by which the body is beginning to shut down. If light pressure applied to the skin results in fast-forming bruises then he is certainly more tender than what is natural.

This is a particularly distressing thing to note because it means that he has already bypassed stage one and therefore the expiration period for potential treatments (two days after contracting the disease) has come and gone. We probably could have administered a combined anti-viral medication of Oseltamivir and Zanamavir but it's more than likely that his body will merely reject the vaccine.

Before, he was nothing. An '_It_.' A '_He_.' A '_test subject_.' Or _Boy_. But he is none of these things. He is Peter. Peter T. Bishop. And we have done this to him. He isn't readings or lab notes or explorations. He is a whole person with two arms and two legs and a sweet little face and it's too hard to ignore that now. He was never _just_ a brain. I don't even think he cares himself that he is exceptionally brighter than most people and especially children of his surrounding age. I don't even think he has much awareness of anything really.

We knew that his health had been deteriorating since we paired him with the lab animals, but, at the time, Peter's well-being didn't entirely fit into the greater perspective of things. William was more hard-line, I remember that much. Peter was the only predisposed child that we had access to and Walter's concern (although a mild concern considering his supposed relationship to the subject) beyond test results was hindering explorations. Couldn't do this, shouldn't do that.

But despite fighting with William, Walter, too, was guilty for confusing the child with any number of animals we kept in the cages. He may as well have had his own cage right here in our lab with a stable diet of concentrated water and dried bread.

I'm not it's mother, I never pretended to be. But the memory of him holding my hand still haunts me to this day. When the birth mother realises the extent of Peter's illness and has him admitted to hospital, it's clear to the three of us that that in itself will be his ironic death sentence. They will seclude him in a quarantined area (not unlike his existence at the lab) and make like they can treat him, but he will only be given local and general anaesthetics to ease the pain and the parents will be told to 'prepare themselves for the worst.'

Again, no difference to the depression of consciousness here and where Walter is reminded before every exploration more or less to prepare himself for the worst. The worst not necessarily relating to his only son's welfare, of course, but to experiments going slightly awry.

His blood will be on our hands when he dies – because he _will_ die. He wasn't expendable to us but apparently forces above anyone's control thought otherwise. Perhaps this is the age-old lesson when man tries to play God. We knew what we were doing. We knew our work often defied the laws of physics and nature but William and Walter are ambassadors of science, not eco-critics. And William is preparing for something much greater still. It's just a shame that the first civilian caught in the crossfire of this war should happen to be a child.


	7. Pr117 NB2

Project 117 – Notes 2 –

Walter has become obsessed with Peter's illness. Within reason. The scientist in him can't grieve like any normal parent might. He's allowed to worry, the mother's beside herself too, but this new project... it seems altogether... far-fetched.

Since terminating my physical assessment of his son, he eventually returned back to the lab several days later minus the child. Peter was indeed rushed to hospital – he stopped trying to hide evidence of the disease from his wife and finally face facts.

On returning, he worked mostly alone but William also tried to find a cure. All explorations into the antidote came up short.

In his research, Walter discovered that a Swiss physician named Dr. Alfred Gross (d. 1936) successfully cured a case of hepia and thus prevented pandemic. However, since no other record can be found surrounding Gross' impressive accomplishment, Walter has returned to a project he and William had investigated only ever in theory some two years beforehand.

It was so unpractised, in fact, that the project was never really anything beyond a hypothetical study and can't rightly be entitled Exploration anything. Because nothing was explored.

Walter argued that that was because we didn't have the resources but now more than anything we have the incentive. He actually wants to further develop their idea on how to construct a device that will allow him to cross the time-space continuum, retrieve Gross and have him treat his son.

William, surprisingly, seems to encourage such an exploration and it is my professional opinion that this is a foolish thing to pursue. Their concept dreamed up years ago was at best, shaky. Their motive now, although noble, is desperate and rushed and there is no telling of the new complications they may face even by connecting that arc between our world and Gross' already lived-out world. If, indeed, Walter successfully located the physician from the When and brought him back to the Now, what's to say either of them could survive such a compressed break-down and then rebuilding of human tissue.

Transportation from A to B sounds like a work of fiction, but as for the majority of our work, such a criticism has never really hindered us in the past. But transportation from A to _b _[_b _being the same coordinates but in a different era], it seems wholly inappropriate to rush a theory so unsteady, so young.

I think it safer 'to prepare for the worst.' In the event that the child passes, Bell should look to reanimation. But, again, at this stage, in this lab, that thinking is probably, at the very least, ten or twenty years before our time.


	8. Pr117 NB3

Project 117 – Notes 3 –

* Transportation device project terminated.

Walter was readying himself for Exploration 1 of the project – retrieving Dr Alfred Gross circa 1930 to treat his son.

** The equipment for the device was scattered by Walter himself. Since his stance had shifted, he felt himself morally responsible to shield his work even from William and myself. We know that the parts of the device have been divided and stored in a series of safety deposit boxes but the locations for which we do not know.

That the project was scientifically unsound was not what changed Walter's mind about the exploration (Personal unforeseen circumstances).

Attached, personal lab report –

When news of Walter coming into the lab late last night and trashing the place reached me, I can't say that I was surprised. I am rarely surprised by his behaviour, or Bell's, because I know them. I have come to care for them and it is with insufferable guilt and anguish that I too must acknowledge the death of the minor. Or, at least, so I thought that morning.

Upon Walter's work station was all of Peter's drawings and artwork that he had ever presented to us. He was always sketching away the long hours we held him in the lab: after school, at the weekends. His mother was probably just grateful that his father seemed to be making time for him and never thought to question what he actually did there.

It is my understanding that they had been having problems in their marriage and the woman worked extended shifts herself. I doubt money was her incentive. She may have just needed away from the child as much as his father did, and away from the father even more so. I'm sure they both regret that now.

I grinned and cried all at once when Walter, slumped over the work station and already drinking, pushed a scrap piece of paper towards me. In the picture I had an electric shade of orange hair and a huge ear-to-ear smile across my face. I was apparently passing young Peter a test tube: through powers of deduction it had to be Peter's perception of himself because the figure was drawn significantly smaller than the orange me and there was a bold 'P' on his shirt.

Walter was feeding that damned coin between his hands again, almost like a nervous tick and only pocketing it whenever he brought his single malt to his mouth. I accepted the picture and turned away from him, it was William who broke our silence.

He enquired after the boy and Walter's eyes brimmed with tears. William asked again, even being so polite as to rest a hand on the man's shoulder. He started shaking his head and muttering, standing up and moving about the lab talking of repentance and sin and time and judgement.


	9. Pr618 Ex8

Project 618 – Exploration 8 –

NB/ See lab notes Pr617 Ex1-34 and Pr618 Ex 1-7, located in rom-file16.

Prior to Bell's focus on the Cortexiphan drug trials – something Walter seemed to happily turn a blind eye to, even though he required Peter's higher brain function and unique insight – he and Bishop had been manufacturing a device to close off portals into alternate realities we, by organised chaos, may have glimpses into.

This passing between one or more realities is something that we have well documented since the birth of project 617 and the discovery of 'soft spots.' Project 618 acted as a plug essentially, controlling but not undoing the work of Project 617.

Cortexiphan for Bell was never something inhumane. Yes, it required experimentation of children and yes, it required the recurring exploitation of one child – the boy – to develop the drug through its early stages. But it did so much more than that. By heightening the minds and abilities of these children, they would be more equipped to cope with what was coming.

And what _was_ coming?

* Project 617: When inebriated on hallucinogenics, William and Walter believed to be accessing these other realities and wanted to establish something more concrete, something more stable. Enhancing minors was just to prepare our future generations but for now, for those of us not mentally capable of naturally accessing these other versions of ourselves beyond the fleeting discomfort of deja vu, they had successfully passed between these other worlds.

** This transportation wasn't as simple as Walter's unstructured time machine project – brilliant in theory but in practice much, much more life threatening.

*** Walter should have known better, should have remembered the implications here. Stealing not just one child, but two...

Attached, personal lab report –

When we found Walter that morning, the lab wrecked, himself drunk and desolate, I thought that was it. I waited, holding that baited breath, for the news that the boy had slipped away quietly in his sleep. But that wasn't what Walter had planned for him, it seemed.

We couldn't give the child a normal life and apparently his father couldn't give him a normal death either. He had stolen the second child from the other reality, a healthier version with disconnected memories and replaced him with the Peter that we had all known for years so as not to upset his wife. He couldn't bring a little boy back from the dead any sooner than he could be seen to be bringing one back from another reality. So she had to believe that her son had miraculously recovered from his terminally ill health.

_There is more than one of everYthing._

But perhaps the most frightening thing isn't that he had managed to save his son at all. He had just damned him twice. Wrong both boys, for both were kidnapped. Kidnapped by their own father. Out of love? Out of desperation? Irrationality? Grief.

The healthy Peter was taken from the alternate reality in which Walter had unplugged without consent. The unhealthy Peter... the poor boy was taken quickly in the night, brought back here I am to believe, this very lab. Brought back to die. Walter sat with him, he said, just watching the little boy die. No pain killers, no doctors, no hope.

He wouldn't tell us what he did with the body but his fingernails were dirty and his clothes grubby. I expect he gave the child a proper burial. Perhaps when the soil settles, he might even see to it that the lost soul deserves to have his own gravestone erected. Eventually.

He understood that he had done wrong. Somewhere another Walter has lost a Peter too. Now there are two heartbroken fathers. Maybe he did a complete swap and gave his alternate self a child to bury, letting him think that his son was kidnapped and murdered and that was that: a heinous crime but not an uncommon thing. But, somehow, I doubt it.

Project 618 was started up for a reason – to control events and individuals spilling in between two worlds. How could Walter, an advocate of the plug-device, be so myopic? The complications are endless here. For Peter anyway.

His father may want to let him rest but we'll have to examine the _new_ him now. Regular doctors will think it fascinating that he's free of bird flu but for us, we know that he isn't accustomed to our world. The ailments stemming from such an unprepared crossover and from one so young are inconclusive as of yet.

I don't know what's worse: burying a child, or burying a child and abducting another to parent, or having that option in the first place? I think Walter has been wronged himself here. I think science has wronged him. Tortured him. Probably because he couldn't solve this from the start. So he took to trying to solve it even in the End.


	10. Physical Assessment 7'1

Physical Assessment 7 (1) –

Test subject exhibits mild respiratory distress and seems less comfortable in the lab. When interviewed by myself what he can remember about his experiences inside of the lab he is able to recall a number of experiments including shock treatment (similar to our own experiments on his former/'alter' self) but definitely no exposure to animal test subjects. He also has no recollection of myself or Bell – perhaps when experimented on in his other life, his father had done so in secret.

When undressed, there was slight bruising to his body – especially around the ribcage area – but dissimilar to the bruising that our boy experienced through his deteriorating illness. Although we can allow for the possibility that this child is more hyper/less calm in personality due to variations of events in his life and may be therefore more prone to falling over or hurting himself, we cannot rule out physical abuse from his home.

Physical differences between this child and Walter's traditionally biological son:

Left-handed,

Blue-green irises (as opposed to prominent green),

Thinner (not bloated on steroids),

Physical similarities:

Equally pale complexion (although the other child was sick, so the white pallor of this child must owe to his natural environment),

IQ still at 190.

Attached, personal lab report –

Just as some cities can be smokier, the levels of oxygen in the airs between the different worlds must be different too. If a pair of seven year old lungs are expected to adjust to an entirely new environment, breathing apparatus will be required (either to receive or restrict more oxygen into the body).

Bell devised a special nebuliser to stabilise his breathing and relieve attacks with a blend of several medicines, and when he trusted that the child could come off the machine and breathe alone, several prototype inhalers were constructed quickly although the subject did not require anything further.

The bruising, Walter was loathed to admit, probably was because of problems in the home. When he had stolen the child away, it wasn't as simple as a father beckoning his boy on a little outing with the promise of candy and such. Even though I continuously questioned his mental health at the time, Walter seems adamant that he hadn't misjudged the fact that at first the replacement Peter recoiled from him.

I've seen him hit the dead Peter countless times in the past and threats of punishment was even more common. Peter was never anything more than a possession to Walter, and he perhaps decided to care about aforementioned pet too little too late. Walter is a man with no social restraint and it is feasible that his alternate self has an even lesser grip on his mind and attitude.

It never occurred to the man that just because he wouldn't reject his new son, that didn't ensure that the new son would instantly warm to him. Although Peter has no cause to worry that he is indeed somewhere else and that everything about his life has now radically changed, he is still unsure of [what he perceives as] his own father and that in itself concerns me.

Maybe despite the questionable ethics, it was for the greater good that a little boy was taken from a broken home and not just swallowed up in foster care but actually given the chance to relive his life all over again minus the abuse and the neglect. Maybe they were each other's catharsis.

Walter hadn't been the best father, not by a long shot. The dead Peter's life was literally held in all of our hands – not when he fell ill but before that. He wouldn't have fallen ill at all if it weren't for us. I'm hating myself at the minute beginning to differentiate between a 'Peter' and a 'dead Peter' like this new one is a suitable replacement. Whether or not young Peter is dead and this one alive, it doesn't change the fact that we ourselves indirectly killed a minor. Bringing this new Peter here doesn't bring the old one back, it doesn't undo anything. They are different. They mightn't see it. His mother mightn't be willing to see it either. But we can.

I can only hope that – although kidnapping him from the clutches of the other Walter seems better for both our world and the child now – it won't significantly alter his life in the future. There is no telling if the change can affect a person subconsciously, owing to anxieties about not fitting in and not quite understanding why; and if this covert chipping away at his mental health does prevail, will Peter have a better quality of life here in the long run?


End file.
